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The Bechdel Test
I’m bored and tired so I decided to watch some TED talks. I watched one by Colin Stokes on how movies teach manhood. Stokes talked about a way to measure gender bias in movies called The Bechdel Test.
Passing the Bechdel Test means that a movie meets the following 3 criteria:
- The movie has at least 2 [named] female characters in it
- Who talk to each other
- About something besides a man
Examples of recent movies that pass the Bechdel Test
For WAY MORE check out the website 
A Success in a Failure
I am furious and still furious about a situation I found myself in last Sunday but it was a good test for me.
I had a job “audition” last Sunday for basically a summer camp version of the job I currently have with the City of Toronto. Sunday transit is horrible and my schedule was totally thrown off so I was roughly 10 minutes late. I thought that at the least I would have to apologize profusely and really bring my game! I was wrong. I was fucking locked out of the building along with someone else who was late. We walked around and tried all the doors before finally going back to the main entrance where I banged on the window (I couldn’t just leave). A young woman opened the door, let us in and went and got the guy who was leading the pre-selection group “audition”. He came down and told us that they had already started so we couldn’t join but that they would keep us in mind in case they didn’t fill all
the positions. I held it together, apologized, thanked them for the opportunity and went home.
I called my Mother as I walked back to the subway and cried. She suggested I send them an apology email so that even though being late made me look bad the email would help me later if they did need to have more “auditions”.
When I got home I cried to Michael. I was so ashamed, angry, sad, embarrassed and at a loss for words. “I’m never late!” I kept saying. (It’s true! I’m not!) Michael just hugged me. I told him that I wanted to hurt myself but reminded myself in my head that I should just cry. One of the distractions I checked of in the DBT workbook was that I’d cry. So I cried.
because you learn from it!
Eventually I decided that I was done with crying and had to calm down (the crying was keeping me from cutting but I wasn’t calm). I walked away from Michael and leaned against the wall. “This sucks but I can’t do anything about it,” I said, mostly to myself. “I can only write that email and then it’s out of my hands.” I took deep breaths and went to write my email.
Monday afternoon I received a response to my apology email saying that my apology was appreciated and my maturity respect. It was reconfirmed that they would keep me in mind if they needed more people.
I did it! A situation that would normally have resulted in devastating self harm, a complete freak out and a lot of emotional pain was over in about 20 minutes and even though that job may be gone for this year (I still have a job interview somewhere else in early May) I came out on top! I put myself to the test and I passed!
A co-worker of mine who has worked in City camps for about 6 years wrote to them also just saying that I would be a great fit so hopefully if they need more people his email will help also (it was so sweet of him to write the email for me!).
